


how confused am i by our happiness

by aaalice



Series: what more can i say? [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Established Keith/Lance (Voltron), Established Relationship, Fluff, Keith (Voltron)'s Shack, Love, M/M, Memories, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, klance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:53:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25456519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aaalice/pseuds/aaalice
Summary: fluffy post-canon klance!after moving in to their new house, keith and lance drive back down to keith’s shack to collect memories.featuring casual artist keith, klance banter, and a loving, domestic relationship :)
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: what more can i say? [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1821664
Kudos: 43





	how confused am i by our happiness

**Author's Note:**

> full disclosure i haven't watched the show in a long time (and i have the world’s worst memory) and i dont know if the shack was destroyed in the war or whatever or not but in this world its still up and untouched
> 
> **if you want context for their relationship/living arrangements, please check out the first work in this series you don’t need it tho**
> 
> idea spawned from [this song](https://youtu.be/Wp0w3ACx_Ps) from the musical falsettos, give it a listen!
> 
> anyways enjoy!

  
_what more can i say?_  
how can i express  
how confused am i by our happiness?   
\- - - - - 

It was supposed to be a short trip.

Drive up to Keith's dilapidated old shack, take anything he might have wanted, and leave. Get in, get out. That was how it _had_ been going until Lance, who'd decided that 'stay in the car, I won't be long' was just a suggestion, came barging through the door asking for the full tour of the singular room.

He'd immediately done a gallery walk of the whole place, even though he'd been there before, taking it all in with fresh eyes. The massive cork board on the adjacent wall, still full of paper and yarn, had especially caught his attention. He marveled over all of the notes and pictures that were tacked up, gazed over it all with a fondness Keith had never quite held.

"I think this one's my favorite," Lance decided, and Keith looked up from picking through the books on his old shelf to see Lance pointing out the big circular star chart on the lower left. "We have to take it back."

Keith shrugged. "It doesn't really mean anything anymore." He wasn't expecting the offended gasp from Lance.

"Of course it means something! Look at everything you did, Keith!" Lance gestured to the expanse of the board. "Without you and all your research, we never would have found the lions!"

"By that logic, we'll have to take everything on there," he joked. 

He meant it to be sarcastic, but Lance's eyes lit up at the proposition. Keith shook his head, barely catching Lance's disappointed expression as he turned back to the shelf. 

"I want to read all of these," Lance murmured, tracing over the pathways of yarn that connected the pins.

"Later. We need to get all this stuff out first." Keith exmained the last of the books, finally deciding against putting in the box. 

"Come on," Lance urged. "We've got time."

"Not enough to go through the whole board!"

Lance huffed with exasperation. "You're no fun."

Keith shook his head with a grin. He closed the flaps of the box, picked it up, and carried it over to sit with the others on the front porch. When he came back in, Lance was still gazing up at the board.

"You know what? I lied. This one's my favorite." Lance pointed up to a picture Keith had taken in the cave, a carving of the Blue Lion's profile. God, he barely remembered taking it. It was one of the first things that he'd put up there, the very first carving he'd noticed upon entering the cave.

Lance looked back to Keith, a sad sort of smile on his face. "I miss her."

Keith nodded solemnly. He missed Red. He and the Black lion hadn't exactly formed the greatest of connections, especially compared to that of Shiro and Zarkon. Even if his less-fond memories were from his time as leader, he still missed piloting. Black hadn't been as easy to control and bond with as Red had, but the experiences were still once-in-a-lifetime. 

Lance, he knew, had been connected to both his lions and was just as dedicated a blue paladin as he was a red one. Blue _had_ been the first lion they found, along with only responding to Lance’s touch, and started them on their journey. There would always be a special place in their hearts for her. 

Lance had already turned back to the board, examining the various pictures and drawings of his old lion, murmuring something about how many there were. Keith felt some sort of dampened anxiety, someone was looking at his work and no doubt forming judgements, but Lance's voice broke him out of it, having already moved to something else in the room.

"Come on, why not take all of them?" 

He was walking towards the bookshelf that Keith had apparently not saved enough of on his first go-round of packing it up.

"They're heavy," Keith answered, surveying the board for the last time as a whole, cohesive piece. "Besides," he added, picking up an empty box and moving it below the board, "I'm not going to read those ones."

Lance looked up at him for a moment, then back to the books. "I'm taking them."

Keith rolled his eyes. "Next you'll be telling me you want to take back the cinder blocks."

He didn't even need to look up to know that Lance was considering the idea. Keith cursed himself for not learning his lesson about mixing sarcasm and Lance McClain. Keith focused on the board and began to slowly dismantle the mess of pictures, notes, and yarn.

"Lance," he said calmly, "we're not taking the cinder blocks."

Lance contemplated silently for a moment before he tried to convince Keith again. 

"What about just one?"

"No! What would we possibly use it for?"

"Just..." he fumbled, "memories!"

At Keith's sigh, Lance joined him at the board and began to help him take things down, muttering, "It's the thought that counts."

Keith narrowed his eyes, still not looking at him. "If they're just thoughts, you should have no problem carrying them all to the car by yourself."

"Fine," Lance pouted, carefully pulling down a long piece of yarn. "You're no fun."

"So I've been told."

Once they'd taken everything down from the cork board, boxed everything else up, and loaded it into the car, Keith leaned against the doorframe, crossed his arms, and did a final sweep of the room.

It was unfamiliar; though the shack didn't have much character to begin with, it was significantly emptier without all of Keith's old belongings. He didn't want to take too much away from it, figuring it might be of use to someone else someday. That was a scary thought. He really hoped his own experiences here wouldn't befall any other poor soul, especially if they were anything like him.

"This isn't the final goodbye, you know." Lance's voice, always a refreshing accompaniment to Keith's worrisome thoughts, appeared alongside the boy himself just beside the open door.

"I know," Keith replied. In truth, he had barely considered revisiting this place. It was a bit of a love-hate relationship, even with the benefit of Lance's fascinated appreciation.

"We can always come back." Lance's hand tugged at Keith's arm, freeing it up so he could lace their fingers.

Keith stood up straight and turned to face him. "Ready to go?"

"As long as you are."

While Keith had assumed they'd just keep the boxes in the house and go through them at some point in the distant future when they felt more up to the task, Lance went about unpacking minutes after they got home. Arguing that he was simply preserving memories, he ordered Keith to assemble the pictures, posters, and notes from the board in small groups so he could frame them together.

Keith, assuming correctly that fighting back would be a losing battle, got to work as Lance scoured their house for frames that Keith was quite certain they didn't have. But lo and behold, just shy of an hour later, framed pictures and notes were hung up all around the house. 

Now, this had all started because Lance had brought plenty of his own childhood memories from home to their new house, pictures and vases and jewelry (plus his stacks and stacks of photo albums), and quickly realized the place felt more like 'his' than 'theirs.' 

Keith truly didn't mind having only Lance's stuff on display, even thought that his own things might ruin the atmosphere of the cute and familial environment, but Lance had insisted. Now, though, Keith felt that the mantle would look quite empty without his map above it, the big circle labeled ENERGY SOURCE! in the very center.

He especially felt a fulfilling warmth in his chest when he saw Lance gazing up at the big circular star chart they'd hung above Keith's desk, reading over all of the notes, calling Keith over occasionally to decipher what he'd written in his nearly illegible handwriting all those years ago.

Lance was just...so proud. So unreasonably proud, in Keith's opinion, of the charts and maps and notes and pictures and drawings, so intrigued and so admiring. He seemed, in some way Keith couldn't figure out, to find beauty in the work Keith had created, never got tired of staring and studying and appreciating.

And it didn't end with his Pre-Voltron/Post-Garrison Era either. Keith tended to draw quite a lot, not any purposeful works of art, but little sketches in the margins of any paper he touched. A few of the same things he used to draw, the blue lion and the symbols from the cave, but he found muses from his surroundings in their house, too.

He had a litany of objects to study around the house, vases and pictures and art and trinkets and lamps and jars or whatever other little items Lance had thought were pretty enough to decorate their open surfaces.

He drew the V symbol that had decorated their armor quite a lot, the shape of their bayards, gave emphasis to the angular eyes of the Voltron lions whenever he drew their faces. Drew the shape of the castleship, bare outlines of Galra drone ships, little things here and there that crossed his mind.

Luckily, Lance hadn't gotten the mind to watch him as he drew, but he did like examining the finished pieces and works in progress Keith left out at his desk. He even saved some of his favorites (that weren't on valuable papers) and slipped them into a purple photo album he'd been adding to very frequently lately.

(Later in the year, of course, Keith had been called over to the living room the minute he came home where Lance was going over the mountains of albums he'd taken from his old house, gushing over pictures of everyone. He'd lastly taken out that same album he'd been adding to periodically, now with a picture of the two of them from the farm in the opening on the cover.

They'd gone over it for what should have been the next ten minutes, but what was actually the next hour. Ther time was split into part Lance gushing over Keith's drawings, part Keith marveling over pictures of the two of them he'd forgotten they'd taken, part equal, silent reminiscing.

It had been months since they'd finished decorating the house, but Lance had taken pictures of the way Keith's shack had looked before they'd taken it all down. Keith didn't even realize that the board couldn't be assembled the same way again, that the picture Lance had taken was all they had left of the original formation. 

Keith never would have thought to save things like that. He mostly relied on his own memory, which, granted, wasn't exactly...photographic. Now that he'd been introduced to those saved moments, he came to the conclusion that he'd definitely fight another war to keep that album intact. 

He was too luck to have someone like Lance. Well, that was true for various reasons, but in regards to the present, he was happy Lance had thought to save those pictures. The memories were fond ones, and he was astounded that there were that many.)

It got to a point where, if given the opportunity, Keith would leave little drawings on Lance's desk, in his pockets, anywhere he would check frequently enough. Cheesy things like that were never what he'd envisioned himself doing in a relationship, but the sight of Lance's face lighting up whenever he found one motivated him beyond his belief. 

They'd truly brought it all together in such lovely harmony. The house, new but with familiar surroundings outside and inside. Childhood (and teenagehood) memories from when they were apart, an album's worth of stories now that they were together. Their competitive natures and banter, old habits that still ran strong, paired with the new overflowing love and affection.

And the two of them in the middle of it all, happier than they ever thought they might be, with futures they were proud of. 

A lovely harmony, indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> the first two works have been very description heavy and not very scene-heavy, but have no fear! the next few works will have more scenes and interactions. 
> 
> also i was like really tired when i edited this so there might be mistakes in the second half
> 
> if you didn’t already know, this is part of a series of domestic post-canon klance! if you’re reading this once everything has been released and the series is done, please check them all out if you liked this one!
> 
> thank you so much for reading! kudos and comments are greatly appreciated! 
> 
> :)


End file.
